rawstory.com — Major Nidal Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the Fort Hood shootings and will be tried in a military court. The Army apparently sees no reason to treat the case as one of terrorism or turn it over to federal prosecutors, and the FBI has released a statement saying it has no information that "Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot."

However, this has not stopped Sen. John McCain, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Oliver North, and any number of Fox News commentators from demanding that the shootings be regarded as an act of Muslim terrorism.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow sees these assertions as stemming from an eagerness to charge President Obama with allowing "a terrorist attack on his watch," even if it means ignoring the legal definition of terrorism. She turned to constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley to explain the legal issues involved.

"I think that the Army is going about this in the right way," Turley began. "Criminal investigators and lawyers and judges don't have the luxury that some people have on television to just simply say this must be terrorism."

"You can't just simply say that because somebody kills a large number of people that it's terrorism," Turley explained. "There are plenty of people who act out of rage. ... Some of them are perfectly unhinged and they will latch onto religious views or political views, but what they're really acting out of is mental illness."

Both. He made an extremely bad decision - not only for his own sake but on the behalf of the Islamic community. I just hope that over time the general public doesn't see all Muslims as a threat in general. Only a very, very small minority acts in this way.